The Story of the Chevalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut is a novel by Antoine François Prévost. It tells a tragic love story about a nobleman (known only as the Chevalier des Grieux) and a common woman (Manon Lescaut). Their decision to live together without marriage is the start of a moral decline that also leads to gambling, fraud, theft, murder, and Manon's death as a deportee in New Orleans.
The story was first published in 1731 as the final volume of Prévost's serial novel Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality. In 1733, all copies for sale in Paris were seized due to the volume's morally questionable content. This effective ban contributed to an increase in popularity, prompting unauthorized reprints. In 1753, Prévost published Manon Lescaut as a revised standalone book, which is now the most commonly reprinted version.
The novel was unusual for depicting Paris's "low life" and for discussing the lovers' money problems in numerical detail: both choices contribute to its realism and its aura of scandal. The story is narrated retroactively by des Grieux, an early example of the French genre of the confessional récit. Over the centuries, audiences have judged the character Manon differently. Eighteenth-century audiences saw her as an unworthy figure who inspired pity due to the sincerity of her love. Nineteenth-century responses saw her as a nearly mythological sex symbol, either a who corrupts des Grieux or a hooker with a heart of gold. Today, scholars tend to see Manon as a victim of broader social forces, who is misrepresented by des Grieux's narration of her experience.
The novel is regarded as a classic, and in 1991 it was the most reprinted novel in French literature, with over 250 editions over the preceding 260 years. It has frequently been adapted into plays, ballets, films, and particularly operas. The most renowned adaptations are the operas Manon Lescaut by Daniel Auber (1856), Manon by Jules Massenet (1884), and Manon Lescaut by Giacomo Puccini (1893).
Plot summary
The seventeen-year-old Chevalier des Grieux, a seminary student and the younger son of a noble family, falls in love at first sight with Manon, a fifteen-year-old of common birth on her way to a convent. They immediately run away together, and spend their meagre savings living pleasurably in Paris. As they run low on funds, Manon has sex with a Monsieur de B—— for money; des Grieux forgives her. M. de B—— alerts des Grieux's family to his location, and des Grieux is forcibly brought home and confined to his room. Eventually, he enters St. Sulpice seminary with his friend Tiberge and spends a year as a successful student.
Manon reappears, and des Grieux abandons his plans to become a priest. Using wealth that Manon stole from M. de B——, they move to Chaillot. Their house burns down, and des Grieux begins to cheat gamblers for money. Their servants rob them, and Manon agrees to become the mistress of a Monsieur G—— M——. After accepting substantial gifts, she leaves his house while he awaits her in his bedroom. He has Manon and des Grieux arrested. Des Grieux is sent to St. Lazare (a religious institution for genteel moral correction), and Manon to La Salpêtrière (a harsh prison for "fallen women"). Des Grieux breaks out of his confinement, accidentally killing a porter during his escape, then bribes guards to smuggle Manon out of hers.
They return to Chaillot. Des Grieux borrows money from Tiberge. Manon rejects the advances of an Italian prince. They meet a young G—— M——, son of the G—— M—— whom they had earlier deceived, and decide to defraud him the same way. Manon receives his money and jewels; des Grieux hires thugs to detain him for a night; at his house, the couple eat his dinner and are about to sleep in his bed when his father arrives and has them arrested. They are imprisoned in the ; des Grieux is freed by his father's influence, and Manon is deported to New Orleans as a correction girl.
Des Grieux accompanies Manon to America, pretending they are married. After some time living in idyllic peace, des Grieux asks the Governor, Étienne Perier, to officially wed him to Manon. The Governor instead decides to give Manon to his nephew, Synnelet. Des Grieux duels Synnelet and knocks him unconscious; thinking he has killed the man, the couple flee into the wilderness. Manon dies of exposure and des Grieux buries her, digging her grave with his broken sword. Heartbroken, he is taken back to France by Tiberge and returns to his aristocratic life.
Composition and publication
Antoine François Prévost was a French priest and author. In the 1710s he moved multiple times between a career in the military and a novitiate in the Jesuit priesthood. He joined the Benedictines of St Maur after an unhappy love affair, which has sometimes contributed to speculation that Manon Lescaut has autobiographical inspirations. In 1728, while a monk in Paris, he published the first two volumes of his serial novel Memoirs and Adventures of a Man of Quality, Who Withdrew from the World. He then left his abbey without permission, and his superiors gained a lettre de cachet for his arrest. He fled to England. While he was in exile, volumes three and four were published in Paris.
In 1730, he moved to the Netherlands and signed a contract with the Compagnie des Libraires d'Amsterdam for three more volumes of Memoirs and Adventures. Prévost likely composed Manon Lescaut in March and April 1731. At the time, he was in Amsterdam, and was writing quickly to satisfy his contract. The literary historian R. A. Francis argues that Manon Lescaut was added to his ongoing novel as "an afterthought, determined by commercial reasons." It was first published in May 1731, as volume seven of Memoirs and Adventures, alongside volumes five and six. Beginning in 1733, the Compagnie des Libraires d'Amsterdam also published volume seven on its own, as it proved more popular than the rest of the series.
In 1753, Prévost published a substantially revised edition of volume seven as a standalone publication. The standalone volume was titled The Story of the Chevalier des Grieux and of Manon Lescaut, which was the subtitle of volume VII of Memoirs and Adventures. This edition claimed on its title page to be published in Amsterdam by the Compagnie des Libraires, but was actually published in Paris by François Didot. In this edition, Prévost used more euphemistic language for some of the more vulgar moments, added a new scene where Manon resists the seduction of an Italian prince, and rewrote the ending to replace religious references with a more secular morality. Manon Lescaut is the only novel for which Prévost published a revised edition. The 1753 version of the novel is usually the basis of modern editions. This edition also added nine illustrations, which made the book into more of a luxury object, and also made it more challenging to pirate.
Style The narrative of Manon Lescaut is set apart from the main events of Memoirs and Adventures with a preface and a preamble, both ostensibly written by the unnamed "man of quality" who is the protagonist of the main novel. The preface, titled "Note from the author" (), explains that the story was too large to include within the main narrative. It also says the story will be a morally-instructive example for readers, who will learn not to imitate des Grieux. In the preamble, the narrator witnesses a group of prostitutes being deported. Curious about a particularly beautiful one (Manon), he speaks with the lover travelling with her (des Grieux). Two years later, he encounters des Grieux again, and asks to hear the full story of his experience in America.
The story is thus narrated retroactively as a long speech, delivered by des Grieux nine months after Manon's death. As such, it is an early example of the French genre of the confessional récit. All events are recounted in the first person, and the primary verb tense is passé simple, a past-tense form that is only used in formal written French. The novel does not use quotation marks, even when des Grieux relates what other characters have said, which blurs the boundaries between characters' speech and free indirect speech. Des Grieux's telling frequently interrupts the narrative with apostrophes to absent figures and expressions of intense emotion. When he describes Manon, he often stutters or struggles to find words. Prévost was praised for this informal and expressive style, which invited sympathetic emotion: according to the literary historian Sylviane Albertan-Coppola, "[t]he words flow as the heart overflows; the flow of feelings goes hand in hand with the flow of writing".
Des Grieux is often considered a partly unreliable narrator, whose telling of the story is shaped by his retrospective self-justifications. The scholar R.A. Francis describes some of des Grieux's explanations as "so outrageous that it is hard to imagine them being taken seriously", such as his claim that cheating at cards is morally acceptable because God has made his rich opponents gullible to allow the poor to rectify wealth inequality. According to the literary scholar Lionel Gossman, the layered frame narratives create a general ambiguity of meaning: the narrator tells us what des Grieux told him that Manon told him she thought, and no one is able to achieve certainty about the final "moral" of Manon's life.
Structurally, the novel follows a pattern of repetition and intensification, as similar plot elements recur with slight variations. For example, five different men who are wealthier or more powerful than des Grieux attempt to supplant him in his relationship with Manon. Each time, des Grieux's response is more active and less innocent.
Major themes Tragic love
The story is particularly remembered for its tragic lovers, with des Grieux and Manon being compared to Romeo and Juliet and Tristan and Iseult. The scholar Jean Sgard argues that all of Prévost's writing, including Manon Lescaut, is ultimately about "the impossibility of happiness, the pervasiveness of evil and the misfortune attaching to the passions", all of which lead to "mourning without end". According to R.A. Francis, Prévost is a fundamentally pessimistic writer, who "regarded the flaws of society as inevitable consequences of the flaws of human nature, with little hope of putting them right."
It is an early example of the emerging sentimental novel, in which love can justify anything, and important moral value is placed on strong emotion. Francis argues that eighteenth-century readers were particularly likely to be persuaded by the interpretation that des Grieux's intense love "reveals the greatness of his soul and thus cleanses him of the stains which deeds such as his might leave on a lesser man." Eighteenth-century readers also saw Manon and des Grieux as helpless, fated to their tragic ending. The crimes of both were equally justified by their love and their financial need.
Scandalizing immorality On the novel's first publication, the characters and their choices were seen as shockingly immoral. Des Grieux's rejection of the priesthood in favour of a sexual relationship without marriage, and his crimes of fraud and murder, challenged readers' expectations of acceptable actions for the hero of a novel. Manon's willingness to have sex for money, and her general taste for pleasure and luxury, also seemed irreconcilable with her narrative role as a sympathetic love object. Both were sometimes seen as corrupted characters, and the novel's realistic depiction of Paris's "low life" was unusual and potentially threatening. The scandal was intensified by the historical setting of the novel: the story appears to be set between 1712 and 1717, so it takes place during the final years of Louis XIV's conservative and orderly reign and the start of the regency of King Louis XV, rather than fully during the 8 year long Regency, when stories of corruption would be less surprising.